Rose

When Dimitri woke up, he smiled at me. There had been no noise from next door, although I knew there had been something coming from Amy and Lewis' room early evening. I excused myself and checked in on them whilst Dimitri changed. I knocked on their door and waited for a few moments before being allowed in. Amy was lying in the bed, watching me, with the duvet wrapped around her like a cocoon. Lewis' hair was dishevelled and I had a feeling that I'd just woken him up. Welcome to the world of being a guardian. I scoped the room and noticed a T-shirt and bra draped over the armchair. My first thought was ooh, what have you two been up to. But then I noticed that it was tinged red. I examined it and realised it was bleeding. I turned to face Amy, standing in blue and white spotty PJ's.

"I can explain," she stammered.

"You'd better. What's going on?" She turned to face the wall and lifted up her top. It had to go pretty high and I wondered what Lewis was seeing from the other side. Amy was much more innocent than I was at her age, but I knew fooling around when I saw it. There was a giant gash right down the middle of her back. She told me what happened and I gasped. Another knock interrupted the story and she quickly smoothed down her top before getting it. Dimitri stood there, holding a cup of coffee and a Western. I took in our positions and the fact that Amy was flushed and his eyes narrowed.

"What's going on?" he asked in that gorgeous accent. Amy couldn't show him the gash because, well, he was a 25-year-old guy. Simple, really. So she continued to tell the story.

"Well, Amy, it's cleaned-up now, right?" I noticed the look that Lewis gave her as she nodded. We headed to Lissa and Christian's room, where they were both fully dressed.

"Today," Lissa announced, "we are going to the actual adoption centre."

"Where is it?" Amy asked."I know this village like the back of my hand and I've never seen it."

"It's in the main town on one of the back roads." Amy looked thoughtful. Once we'd all packed up our necessary equipment; a bottle of water, phones, stakes and some sandwiches, we set off. It was a five minute drive and we parked in a multi-storey next to TESCO. Lissa handed Amy a slip of paper with the address on it, and we followed her. We swerved in and out of cars before crossing over an manky looking river. This brought us to a leisure centre. We took a pathway and avoided bicycles coming the other way. The main town was bustling with people. There was a sweet shop which was crammed with teenagers and The Entertainer was giving off the noises of children playing and shrieking for new toys. The pathways were crammed full of people. Didn't they have malls in England? Was it all open town centres? As we made our way towards the mysterious address, we passed all sorts of shops. Most of them I'd never heard of. Where was Macy's or Hollister? The most I saw was an Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt.

"They're really rare brands over here," Amy explained. "If you have that sort of stuff then you obviously have loads of money." Hmm, how strange. Usually those sorts of shops were just normal brands back in America. I saw a WHSmith, McDonalds, Boots, HMV, GAME. There were loads of shops, and people were rushing to get everywhere. There was a little zebra crossing which seemed to be permanently on the green man, and we passed by it, turning off down a little road where there were about five bus stops. We turned again at the Wetherspoons pub and found ourselves in a little courtyard.

"I never even knew this was here," Amy breathed. There was no sunlight, which was good for the Moroi, and no trees at all. It was very bland, so she'd probably had no reason to be here. I scanned the slip of paper which had a drawing of the courtyard and an arrow pointing to a big red brick building that loomed up in front of us. We entered and wandered down a corridor. It was line with doors and each had a different name: Finance, Connexions, NO ENTRY, cleaning. It went on forever. The only one that didn't have a name was the door at the bottom that we were heading to. I crossed my fingers and hoped to God that we were in the right place.

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